The main hall of Ryohuji. The area around this temple has a lot of surprising history around it.

I was digging through old photos last week and I stumbled on some shots I snapped back in 2015 of a large, but rather unremarkable temple in nearby Ofuna.  I visited with a friend on a dull summer day, took a few shots, and thought nothing more of it.  Running across the shots again though, I decided to do a little research and I found that the temple and the area around it is actually far more important historically than I had realized.  It turns out that the immediate area around the Ryuho Temple (Ryuhoji) once held both the Sengoku Era Tamanawa Castle and the Ofuna prisoner-of-war camp.

Ofuna POW Camp

It never ceases to amaze me how much history exists in Japan.  After thousands of years of consistent human habitation and culture, almost every village and city has been constantly built and rebuilt on the ruins of bygone eras.  It keeps Japan modern, but at the same time, a lot of important sites end up lost to time.  Places like Tamanawa Castle are interesting, but it was one of a network of small fortifications, so its loss isn’t so surprising or tragic.  The POW camp, however, is an important part of history, and was the temporary home of some of the war’s most high profile POWs, including Medal of Honor recipient Lt. Cmdr (later Vice Admiral) Richard O’Kane of the submarine USS Tang, and Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington of Black Sheep Squadron fame.  Conditions in the camp were harsh, with prisoners enduring repeated beatings, constant interrogation in which the same questions were asked repeatedly and answers checked for any changes.  Any perceived disrespect, dishonesty, or shift in story resulted in beatings.  Food was scarce, often consisting of a single meal of rice and soup.  Submariners were treated particularly harshly, as they were considered war criminals, since the majority of Japanese merchant ship crews were civilian.  After the war, the camp commandant, Cmdr. Yokura Sashizo, was tried and convicted of war crimes and sentenced to 25 years hard labor.  The camp’s medic, Sueharu Kitamura was also convicted for killing one prisoner and contributing to the deaths of three more.  His death sentence was eventually commuted to 30 years of hard labor.  Submariners were treated particularly harshly.  Surprisingly, of the 126 Americans held in the camp, only six prisoners perished in the camp.  The temple keeps a small wooden pole, called a sotoba, with a small monument in the temple cemetery in memory of the six who died.  In fact, the local community harbored no ill will toward the prisoners and sometimes tried to help them whenever they could.  When the prisoners were working outside the camp, digging tunnels and ditches, it is said that the local people would sometimes bring them tea and snacks.  A few even befriended the POWs after the war and learned English from them.  The guards, however, were not kind.

Today, almost nothing remains of the complex.  After the war ended, the few permanent buildings were converted to a kindergarten, which tore down the old buildings in the 1960s to make way for a new, purpose built structure.  The kindergarten still occupies the site alongside the entrance to Ryuhoji today.  A small part of the foundation of one of the watchtowers is all that remains of the camp, and that is preserved in the private garden of a nearby home (as of 2007)

Looking back down the path from the hall of Ryuhoji. The hillside in the distance was the site of an old castle.

Tamanawa Castle

Tamanawa Castle, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as historically important, but it is still an interesting site.  After the Later Hojo clan in Odawara conquered the area in 1512, destroying nearby Oba Castle in modern day Fujisawa (read more on that here) they established a network of forts throughout the area.  Tamanawa Castle was built on the hilltop opposite Ryuhoji, and was only in service for a few years.  In 1590, the Hojo were defeated by Toyotomi and in the early 1600s as the Tokugawas limited the number of fortifications in each domain, Tamanawa Castle was abandoned, the structures pulled down, and the site largely forgotten.  More recently, a girl’s high school school was built on the site, destroying most of the castle’s earthworks.  There is a very small area that survives, but much of it is on the school grounds and is such not view-able by the public.

And there you have it.  Japan is undoubtedly full of sites like this, and it seems like very few years a construction project uncovers some forgotten village, temple or other ruin.  So if you ever do visit, or come to live in Japan, remember.  History is all around you.  Most of it may be forgotten, but if you look close and do a little digging (literal and figurative), you might be surprised at what you find.

A small shrine of the Suwo sect. There are dozens of shrines like this throughout Japan. This one is on the hillside beside Ryuhoji near Ofuna station, Kamakura, Japan.